Category: It Happened to Me

Blast from the Past: “Worst Date Ever”

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date June 9, 2007
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Group photo from
A scene from Worst Date Ever, Part 4, just before it all went to Hell. I’m the guy with the only unblurred face; in the front row are Crabs, The Waitress and me.

Old Blog Entries? Why?

One of the downsides of switching domains (from accordionguy.blogware.com to joeydevilla.com) and blogging tools is that all the links to my old blog entries have changed completely. I’ve received a number of emails from readers who’ve bookmarked old entries of mine only to find that when they visit those bookmarks, they hit the “can’t find it” page.

So, over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to point to some of my best entries over the past six or so years. If you’re a long-time reader, go enjoy them again! If you’re relatively new to this blog, I think you’ll be in for a treat.

The Best Christmas Present Ever and Worst Date Ever

The first set of stories I’ll point to is Worst Date Ever, which took place around the spring of 1999. It starts with a bout of loneliness and turns into a story complete with strong language, adult situations, a bar brawl, butterscotch schnapps, iambic pentameter and ABBA.

Start with The Best Christmas Present Ever, which features my friend Crabs, who figures prominently in the Worst Date Ever story. While it’s not likely to ever be turned into a Hallmark Cards Christmas Special on TV, I think it’s a pretty good story about the true meaning of Christmas, and the only Yuletide story featuring crab lice.

Then, you can hit the Worst Date Ever entries…

I hope this provides you with some entertaining weekend reading. Enjoy!

Tags Life/Yeah...girls...geez

Appearing on MTV Canada’s “MTV Live” for Accordion Awareness Month

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date June 8, 2007
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MTV sign at MTV Canada studios

Last week, I got an email that went like this:

I’m a producer at MTV Canada and we’re looking for someone with your skills and talent to help us celebrate Accordion Awareness Month – which, as I’m sure you know, is June.

We’re heading out on the street with one of our hosts to talk with passersby about accordions and would love to have someone there to play us through.

Would you be willing and able to film for about half an hour either tomorrow or Wednesday in the Yonge and Bloor area? Our timing is somewhat flexible so we hope you can make it.

One of the traits that I have inherited from my American ancestry is that I am always ready to appear on television on short notice. Of course I accepted the invitation!

As a result, I spent my lunch hour Wednesday in the vicinity of this building:

Masonic Temple sign outside MTV Canada studios

The old Masonic Temple at the lucky address of 888 Yonge Street (at Davenport) in beautiful Accordion City is the current home of MTV Canada’s studios. Prior to that, it was the “CTV Temple of Television”. Before that, it was a concert venue simply known as “The Concert Hall”, and before that, it was the Rockpile club. I’ve been to a number of concerts there, my first one being Nina Hagen back in the 80s, my last one being Tool in the 90s.

I didn’t have to wait too long in their green room, shown below…

MTV Canada’s green room

…and there’s lots of stuff in there to keep guests fed, hydrated and entertained. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough time to indulge in a coupel of rounds of the XBox 360 version of Guitar Hero II (I’ve got the PS2 version at home):

XBox 360 and “Guitar Hero II” in MTV Canada’s green room

I was pleased to find out that I’d be doing the segment Daryn Jones, who hosted my last appearance on MTV Live. I’ve always liked Daryn’s work on the Rick Mercer Report and was a big fan of his old Comedy Network show, Buzz, which he co-hosted with “Mistah Mo”. Funny stuff, that.

The plan was simple — we’d make our way along the short distance between the MTV Canada studios and Accordion City’s main intersection, the corner of Bloor and Yonge streets and get reaction shots from passers-by, improvving all the way. We got shots not only on the street, but inside a pizza parlour and a hairstylist’s as well, and the highlight of the shoot had to be an improvised throwdown putting me against a digeridoo player busking at the corner of Bloor and Yonge.

I’ll hold off on more details about the shoot until after it airs, but I can say that I had a great time doing the shoot, and working with Daryn is always a blast. I even saved a little money: when I went to get my car from the nearby parking lot, the attendant gave me a discount. He told me that he saw me do the shoot from his booth and said: “I always give good rates to celebrities.” Rock!

I have no idea when the segment will air, but it’ll air on Daryn’s show, MTV Live, sometime soon. I’ll post details as soon as I find out.

It Happened to Me

The "Bye Bye Boobies" Party

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date June 4, 2007
4 Comments on The "Bye Bye Boobies" Party

On Saturday, Wendy and I attended our friend C.’s “Bye Bye Boobies” party, an event to celebrate her upcoming breast reduction surgery (which takes place today).

The party featured a lot of breast-themed food presented in a lovely spread, pictured below:

The spread of boob-themed food.

Among the items were this lovely chocolate boob cake:

Chocolate boob cake

…and this bodacious lemon boob cake:

Lemon boob cake.

…and, of course, melon bowls:

Melon bowls.

Wendy and I wanted to contribute, so we used our ice cream maker to prepare some appropriately saucy flavours. Before heading to the party, I took out a Sharpie marker and whipped out some signs for the ice cream. When this computer fad blows over, I could go into the sign making business for ice cream shops and coffeehouses.

Here’s the sign for the first flavour: “Plain” Jayne Mansfield, better known as vanilla:

Sign for the 'Plain Jayne Mansfield' (a.k.a. vanilla) ice cream.

The next flavour was made with one very ripe canteloupe: Melons sorbet:

Sign for the Melons sorbet.

Here’s the one for the ice cream with a banana base (Wendy pureed two very ripe bananas into the standard ice cream mix) and chocolate chips made from a chopped up fancy-pant high cocoa content bar — Touch My Monkey:

Sign for the Touch My Monkey ice cream.

And finally, here’s the sign for the Oreo Cheesecake ice cream. It had 10 smashed-up Oreo cookies in it, and the base contained cream cheese, sour cream and the juice of a lemon, which gave it a distinct cheesecake flavour. You probably shouldn’t have this fat-licious flavour too often.

Sign for the Oreo Cheesecake ice cream.

Our thanks to C. for throwing a great party, and best of luck with the surgery!

Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me Music

"I LOVE DURAN DURAN!"

“I fuckin’ love Duran Duran!” he says, but in the video below (shot last night in Accordion City’s Koreatown neighbourhood), I’m actually playing Nine Inch Nails’ Head Like a Hole. Still, a compliment is a compliment…

Accordion, Instrument of the Gods It Happened to Me

Portland’s "Jesus is Lord" Neon Sign

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date May 28, 2007
1 Comment on Portland’s "Jesus is Lord" Neon Sign

John Philip Green, Pete Forde and I went out one night in Portland to check out Ground Kontrol, an place that’s both bar and arcade devoted to 80’s pinball and video games (I wrote a little bit about the arcade in Global Nerdy). Along the way, we passed by a glowing red neon sign that proclaimed “Jesus is Lord” and couldn’t resist posing beneath it. You know, just in case The Rapture happened that night, or perhaps we might get discovered as supermodels. You never know.

We took the Max, Portland’s light rail system, from the convention center to the stop at Skidmore Fountain. The place’s name is so spot on that it’s downright Dickensian:

'Residence-free individuals' at Portland's Skidmore Fountain light rail stop.
The light rail stop at Skidmore Fountain, Portland, Oregon.

Here’s John, posing underneath the sign. Jesus, please send him some venture capital!

John Philip Green poses beneath a 'Jesus is Lord' neon sign in Portland.
John looks like he believes. Testify!

Pete struck a good pose:

Pete Forde poses beneath a 'Jesus is Lord' neon sign in Portland.
Pete: “Dear Jesus, please give me a brand new drum kit…”

And here I am. Yea, though I walk through the valley of darkness, I have no fear, for I have a big honkin’ accordion:

Joey deVilla poses beneath a 'Jesus is Lord' neon sign in Portland.
Me: “Yay-us! The power of the accordion compels you!”

Accordion, Instrument of the Gods Geek It Happened to Me

Playing Accordion at the RailsConf Keynote

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date May 25, 2007
3 Comments on Playing Accordion at the RailsConf Keynote

Photo by James Duncan Davidson. Click to see it on its original page.

Yes, it’s total bias on my part, but one of my favourite moments from last week’s RailsConf conference — the premier conference for Ruby on Rails developers — was playing the intro musical number for the evening keynotes — me on accordion, along with conference organizer Chad Fowler on his ukelele. It’s not every day that I get to break out the accordion in front of an audience of 1600!

Photo by “sd”. Click to see it on its original page.

We took the Radiohead single Creep and changed it from a song about unrequited love and self-loathing to a little ditty about Rails and its creator, David Heinemeier Hansson. Here are the reworked lyrics:

Writing applications
Used to make me cry
But you wrote a framework
So friendly and dry

You’re a supermodel
And I hear you code too
You’re so effing Hansson
David Heinemeier Hansson

But I’m a noob
I barely wrote depot
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here

(Falsetto part)

Da da da da…
David Heinemeier Hansson
has_many
has_one

The song’s chords are pretty simple: G – B – C – Cm, over and over, so rehearsing it didn’t take very long. Here’s a video that Aaron Huslage shot during our rehearsal just outside the administrative area:

Here’s the video of the actual performance, shot by one “KeeperPat”:

This makes this the second RailsConf at which someone performed a musical number with the words “David Heinemeier Hansson” in the lyrics (why the lucky stiff did it last year with lyrics about how Hansson was killed by Robert Scoble after a flamewar). It’s a tradition now!

I’d like to thank Chad Fowler for going along with the musical suggestion and for being an excellent musical partner. Maybe we could do it again next year — perhaps a ditty where we mention everyone in the Rails Core Team by name?